Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Richard Feynman on "Beauty" and Science

Okay, gang, I just lifted this directly from a Boing Boing post by Cory Doctorow - forgive me, Cory, but I just had to have it here! (Thanks!)

The amazing Richard Feynman - who once won my admiration for his fanciful trip to Tuva - was a particle physicist, and Nobel prize winner, amongst his many accomplishments. He was also one of the most humane, and truly funny scientists I ever researched; and as a popularizer of science, he was right up there with Sagan.

I love this quote from the video:

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”

Frankly, I probably can't technically understand a single one of his contributions to quantum physics... I guess I just love the sort of scientist he seemed to be... a brilliant eccentric... part sage, part trickster... and some guy you hold long philosophical discussions with at a local bar.

Friends of PMB

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Visits to this Memorial

Arthur

"Thank you for taking the time to compile this wonderful tribute to Mac. He connected with so many people in a very direct and meaningful way regardless of whether one had the opportunity to meet him in the physical world. I enjoy visiting this site now and especially when I'm reminded of something that Mac might have tweeted about or blogged about. Your tribute here is a perfect digital gathering spot to take a moment and reflect on the vision and talent and timelessness of Mac Tonnies."

- Joshua Fouts, 12/10/09

"I believe there are many of us who have a great appreciation for this wonderful memorial you've put together, even though we haven't been forthcoming with the comments and encouragement. Know that the blog won't be lost in the cold, obscure corners of cyberspace... there will be those of us who, like you, will drop in from time to time to pay our respects to Mac and reminisce.

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Expresso, Hat and Camera

A Room With a View

The Mark Twain, Kansas City, MO

"Flocks of teenagers materializing like thought-forms borne on the cool night air. An edge of autumn -- brisk but not cold. The Cancer Survivors' Park like an apocalyptic oracle, its touch-activated television screen locked against the encroaching chill, its statues frozen copper silhouettes.

A couple making out in the passenger side of a new Porsche; I glide by clutching my coffee, libido twitching sullenly somewhere in my skull. I find myself rediscovering a close-knit labyrinth of fountains and staircases and charming apartment buildings named after long-dead writers. The lights of Saturday traffic and gaudy horse-drawn carriages are mercifully eclipsed. The world is all shadowed architecture, suddenly shattered as I reenter the realm of the living, coffee cooling steadily. The usual anonymous hordes and casual lovers refracted through caffeinated synapses.

I buy a smoothie at a coffeeshop (Depeche Mode playing in the background) and gradually lose myself in John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider." The immaculate sidewalks, sparkling as if pregnant with diamond, steer me home, past hotels, across the dark scabrous flow of Brush Creek. My apartment building has a new entry keypad, sans telephone handset. Made of reinforced stainless steel, it has the worrying appearance of something designed to survive an imminent nuclear attack.

Through the abandoned lobby with its fading pink carpet and neatly arranged couches.

Hot Rain

Nexxi

"She might have had an identity once. Or at least the synthetic equivalent. But years have passed; entropy haunts the labored rhythm of her stride, the flow of her thoughts. All the sidewalks look the same, an endless montage that recedes to eggshell anonymity in the summer glow..."

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"Out Strolling"

Mac Tonnies, 2009

Mac's Calling Cards:

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"If an alien intelligence is accountable for even a small degree of our collective preoccupation with the "other," it's conceivable that we have, in fact, established a dialogue of sorts. Maybe we're being taught a new mythological syntax so that, confronted with the specter of planetary disaster, we'll have the means of rising to the challenge."

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Tatiana

Aaron

A Transdimensional View

A Transdimensional View

About "Araqinta"

As an artist, my "nom de plume" seems to change as time goes by, and I suspect it always will.. I previously signed my earlier graphic images as "Dia" with the year the image was completed, that is, when Mac was still alive, and I was contributing images to his blog, Posthuman Blues. At the same time, I referred to my digital "workshop" as Araqinta... after a fictional planet I invented for an unfinished sci-fi novel of mine: A Matter of Increments. (The image above was an attempt at "branding"...) My online name during this period was "Zindra", also harkening back to a fictional planet I invented for yet another sci-fi story... also unfinished. (Do we see a pattern here?)

That being said, Mac Tonnies was a real inspiration to me in those days - a type of muse, if you will... and many of the images I created from 2006-2009 probably wouldn't have existed without his influence. Needless to say, many of them wound up on PHB... some of which appear in the body of this blog, and on the sidebar, linked to the PHB pages on which they can be found.

I was an artist for many years before approaching the digital medium; I don't know if I would have ever really fully taken that plunge without Mac's encouragement. And, in some strange sense - and I know I'm not alone in this - Mac continues to be the presiding spirit over much of my work. So, this blog was created for Mac and in his memory, but it also serves as a monument to our friendship - that magical series of synchronistic events that enables two individual psyches to cross the barriers of time, space, and sociological conditioning, and inevitably create a unique bond... a safe haven unaltered by any circumstance, including the illusion of death.